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Difficult deer season closes

ESCANABA – In the Upper Peninsula, the 2014 firearm deer hunting season was notorious for its small deer harvest. According to DNR wildlife biologist Dusty Arsnoe, however, the 2015 season was even rougher for many hunters in the area.

“It’s even a little bit worse than last year, numbers-wise,” Arsnoe said of this year’s hunting season, which concludes Monday.

As of this morning, the DNR’s Escanaba check station had examined about 286 deer this season – 50 percent below its 10-year average.

“It’s been very difficult for hunters across the U.P.,” he said.

In 2014, deer check rates in Escanaba were about 37 percent below the 10-year average by the end of the season.

Trails and Tales radio show host Tim Kobasic said deer check rates are similarly low across the U.P.

“They are down 50 percent from the 10-year average,” he said of the DNR’s peninsula-wide estimates for deer check rates.

The number of deer brought to two buck poll events Kobasic hosted at the Hilltop RV Superstore and the Rusty Rail were close to, but slightly below, average. He said 41 deer were brought to Hilltop’s event, as opposed to about 55 at an equivalent event held at the Island Resort and Casino last year.

One of the primary causes of this decrease is the brutal winters seen in the U.P. over the past three years. While it is far too early to predict how large deer populations will be for next year’s hunting season, weather conditions during the 2015-16 winter will play a major role.

“I think everyone’s hoping for an easy winter,” Arsnoe said.

Still, it will require more than one mild winter for the area’s deer population numbers to return to their former levels.

“It’s going to take a couple years before you see a rebound,” Kobasic said.

If this winter is as rough as those preceding it, though, Arsnoe said the DNR may allow landowners to apply for supplemental deer feeding permits earlier than normal. This step, which the DNR takes in particularly snowy winters, would allow landowners to provide food sources such as grains, clover, and other food for deer before the usual start time in northern U.P. counties – early January.

To encourage the growth of the local deer population, Arsnoe said the DNR also severely limited the number of licenses that were made available for antlerless hunting in the Upper Peninsula this year.

“We’re being really conservative with our antlerless tags – about as conservative as you can be,” he said.

Arsnoe said while this year’s decreased deer harvest was disappointing, it was not a surprise to the DNR or most hunters in the area.

“I think a lot of people expected that it was going to be tough,” he said.

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